Rockin' The Roundhouse

This is the much later, post-Roy Loney Sire-era Groovies, caught at London's Roundhouse club in June of 1976 around the late-dawn of punk, the Shake Some Action Groovies whose signing to Sire meant they bizarrely got lumped in with such punks and young art-rockers as the Ramones (with whom they headlined over at the same venue month after this, the Ramones' debut U.K. gig), Talking Heads, Tuff Darts, Saints, Rezillos, Dead Boys, Richard Hell, etc. One listen to Shake Some Action -- both the LP and the acknowledged classic of the same name -- will tell you: Years before R.E.M., and more than a decade before Ride, this was the band that wanted to be the Byrds (with smatterings of the Beatles) the most. You don't need the cover of the former's "Lady Friend" (along with "Everybody's Been Burned," DAVID CROSBY's greatest Byrds moment) and the latter's "Please Please Me" and "From Me to You" to know it, it's in all the originals too. Add heaping helpings of U.S. vintage '50s rock and R&B (note the two Chuck Berry covers and the Buddy Holly and Little Richard songs as well) and the rest of the British Invasion scene that that inspired (the Rolling Stones' "Miss Amanda Jones" appears), and you have a formative band whose rockin' greatness transcended their super-retro music/attitude. Sadly, like the '79 L.A. gig released in France in '85, Live at the Whiskey A-Go-Go, this recording is only sufficient to document, not red hot and special. But it's still history in the grooves. Pick up the 1989 retrospective Groovies Greatest Grooves for the ultimate document of their Sire era (three LPs, '76-'79) -- it also contains the far-tougher, less-retro Loney-era treasures "Slow Death" and "Tallahassee Lassie" -- and then get this. ~ Jack Rabid